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The Road AheadEzra Hauer1

Abstract: Our road safety future is shaped by decisions that affect the amount of trip making, mode of travel used, kinds of infraon which travel takes place, vehicle fleet, technology in use, and the prevailing norms of behavior. While in the past most suchwere based on intuition and judgement, there is an obvious trend toward decisions based on fact and science. This transi“pragmatic” to a more “rational” style of road safety management is hungry for factual knowledge and for professionalspurveyors. Consequently, a broad class of professionals, those who influence the future of road safety, needs to be trainfact-based road safety knowledge exists. In addition, a vibrant, competent community of road-safety researchers has to be crneed to be trained in the same road safety knowledge as well as in research methods. Above all they need to be freed from theimposed on them by a myopic class of research administrators. The best interest of society is to move toward the gradual esof the rational style of road safety management; it is the engineer’s professional obligation to promote this societal interest.

DOI: 10.1061/~ASCE!0733-947X~2005!131:5~333!

CE Database subject headings: Highway safety; Transportation safety; Training; Engineering profession.

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Introduction

Road safety management is in transition. The transition isaction based on experience, intuition, judgement, and traditioaction based on empirical evidence, science, and technofrom consideration of road safety that is tacit and qualitativconsideration of road safety that is explicit and quantitative. Ofields went through the same metamorphosis. It occurred imilitary perhaps in the 1940s and in medicine and agricueven earlier. In road safety, the transition from reliance onition to reliance on science is already in progress and is accating. The following is an attempt to describe the nature oftransition and some of its implications.

To begin, it will help to be clear about what shapes our rsafety future and what managing road safety means. Nextshow that those who now plan, design, and operate the transystem have had virtually no training in road safety and thaguidance documents which they use are the embodiment of jment, not of empirical fact. Third, I will argue that there isgradual emergence of tools and practices that are based ontifiable empirical fact; that we live the beginning of the transifrom pragmatic to rational road safety management. Finally, Iclaim that the emergence of this new attitude is hungry for knedge of fact and hungry for trained personnel. Just as healthnot be delivered without investment in the training of nursesphysicians, or without steady support for research institutebraries, medical schools, and laboratories, so road safety cbe delivered rationally without stable investment in researchmanpower training.

1Professor Emeritus, Univ. of Toronto, 35 Merton St., Apt. 17Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4S 3G4. E-mail: ezra.hauer@utoronto.

Note. Discussion open until October 1, 2005. Separate discusmust be submitted for individual papers. To extend the closing daone month, a written request must be filed with the ASCE ManaEditor. The manuscript for this paper was submitted for review andsible publication on March 5, 2004; approved on July 21, 2004.paper is part of theJournal of Transportation Engineering, Vol. 131,
No. 5, May 1, 2005. ©ASCE, ISSN 0733-947X/2005/5-333–339/$25.00.
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Who and What Shapes Our Road Safety Future

In broad brush strokes, the number and severity of future cris determined by:1. the future amount of trip making~how many trips, how

long!;2. the mode of travel used~on foot, by bicycle, as a rider

public transport, in a private car! and by the mode of gootransport used~car, air, truck, rail!;

3. the kinds of infrastructure on which this travel and transwill take place~i.e., road class, access control, intersecdensity, road design and traffic control, busway, subetc.!;

4. the vehicle fleet and technology in use; and5. the prevailing demography, norms of behavior, human a

ties, and human limitations.This list is an expansion of the more traditional view thatcrashes as the result of bad behavior~drinking, speeding, reckledriving, etc.! and of bad roads~low pavement friction, short sigdistances, illegible signs, etc.!. The expansion is in the claim ththe size of the road safety problem depends mainly on thetity and quality of exposure~how much travel, by what mode,what kind of road, by what kind of vehicle!. From the vantage othis broader perspective it follows that those professionalsdecisions-makers who by their plans, designs, and decisiofluence the future amount of trip making, its mode, who shapdetails of the infrastructure, the vehicles and technology inand those who mold the norms of behavior, they also shaproad safety future of a society.

Who are these professionals and decision-makers? Theprofessionals should include not only the law enforcement oers, driver educators, highway designers, and traffic enginThe amount of travel and its mode depends on land uselocational decisions, on policy, budgets, taxation, and similartors. The professionals who influence these decisions areplanners, architects, municipal engineers, transportation plaand economists and the like; the list of decision-makers con
of those who will consider and make decisions using the recom-
L OF TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING © ASCE / MAY 2005 / 333

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mendations made by the aforementioned professionals, i.e.ticians, legislators, officials on planning boards, officials ofdepartments, and ministries who approve planning and ddocuments, etc.

I can now say what is meant by the phrase “road safetyagement:” it is the sum total of activities that will affect the nuber and severity of future crashes. These activities are ofkinds. First, there are many who attempt to influence road sby premeditated actions and programs. This includes vasafety-oriented activities of the federal, state~provincial!, andmunicipal governments, of the safety councils, the police,motor leagues, the driver educators, the coroners, etc. Sethere is the set of activities and programs that influencesafety but do not have road safety as their central aim. Thcludes all planning~provincial, regional, urban, transportatio!,almost all transportation engineering~highway and traffic!, muchof motor vehicle manufacturing, and most of transportation rlation. Both kinds of actions make up the amorphous safetyagement system and jointly determine how many will be killecrashes, how many injured, and how much property will bestroyed.

These few opening paragraphs are an attempt to causein the reader’s mind from the parochial view of road safetybeing the problem of unruly drivers and bad roads to a mdispassionate and broader perception of what determines thof the future road safety problem. The central claim is thatsize of this problem is influenced by diverse decisions madelarge array of professionals and decision-makers. What musknow to make wise decisions? The answer depends on the sroad safety management that society will adopt.

On Two Styles of Road Safety Management

There are two prototype styles of road safety management,ing two ends of a scale. Call one the pragmatic and the otherational style. The pragmatic style stems from the confluenctwo main motivations. It rests on widespread popular beabout road safety, and on the narrow self-interest of organizaThe popular beliefs may pertain to the efficacy of police enfoment, the importance of passing stricter laws and of firmerishment, the need for better driver education, and more strintests. The self-interest of organizations pertains to the needpopular, to show concern and initiative, to maintain budget, inence, manpower, income etc. The pragmatic style of road smanagement is a prototype. There is no intent to claim thareal organization fits this mold. However, if one did, then thosits employ would not really need to know any facts about rsafety, other than facts about what the widely held lay beliefsThe organization would have no use for research other tha

Fig. 1. Styles of

research of public opinion. There would be no real reason to

334 / JOURNAL OF TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING © ASCE / MAY 200

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ascertain what the safety consequences of any initiativeexcept if they seemed favorable and could be used for prelations.

The rational style, in contrast, is rooted in the desire to rethe harm of crashes efficiently. One wishes to foresee thesafety consequences of decisions and actions, to ascertaicost, and to balance costs and gains. One also wishes to imthe management of safety in light of what can be learnedexperience and experiment. Again, perhaps no real organizbehaves in this manner. However, if one did, professionalsemploy would need to use what factual knowledge exists anorganization would wish to do evaluative research in ordelearn from experience. These two ends of the scale are shoFig. 1.

Where on this scale is the operation of a real actor or orzation can be ascertained by asking a few questions:~1! Does theactor or organization require that extant factual knowledge athe safety consequences of decisions be ascertained?~2! Does theactor or organization employ or buy advice from people whobeen trained in and have acquired factual knowledge aboutsafety?~3! Does the actor or organization do evaluative reseto learn about the success or failure of its actions? If the answthese questions is “no,” the style of the actor or organizatioclose to pragmatic.

In these test questions the phrase “factual knowledge”used. A brief clarification of its meaning is required. Intuitionexperience are fallible guides to road safety. Neither intuitionlay beliefs, nor personal or professional experience can tell ohow much wider lanes or more speed enforcement will reaccidents. Only scientific research can do so. This is welcepted in medicine, education, and most similar fields. Thusphrase “factual knowledge” means information accumulateresearch that is based on data, measurement, and experimeis extracted from these by defensible means.

The factual knowledge I speak of is mainly about thebetween action and its consequences in terms of crash freqand severity. At present, such factual knowledge is not part otraining given to professionals whose decisions affect crashquency or severity. I can attest to the verity of this statembecause, for 27 years I taught traffic engineering, highway deand transportation planning to budding civil engineers. Civilgineers graduate from a 4 year program without being taabout the link between the design decisions they will makethe crash frequency and severity that will follow. True, theytake a course or two about traffic and highway design. Intraffic course most of the time will be devoted to capacitydelay; in the highway design course to geometric designdards. The road safety consequences of their engineering ddecisions will not be mentioned.

Some will object to this statement and claim that concern

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geometric design standards; that adherence to the MU~FHWA 2000! and the Policy on geometric design of highwand streets~AASHTO 2001! will automatically ensure thatproper amount of safety is built into roads. Such a belief, whonestly and passionately held, is without foundation. Thedards and warrants in the aforementioned documents are, blarge, the embodiment of opinion and personal experience, nscientifically supportable empirical evidence. Having dealtthis issue at length elsewhere~Hauer 2000a, b!, this is not theplace to repeat chapter and verse. But the reader can pmatter to a test. Consider, e.g., the task of selecting the rada horizontal curve. Does the Policy~AASHTO 2001! tell howmany crashes will be saved if a larger radius is chosen? Itnot. And yet, research~on two-lane rural roads! consistently indicates that the larger the curve radius the fewer the crashesdesigner has no practical way of weighing the cost of a laradius~which depends on the specific circumstances! against theassociated safety benefits. Nor is there any hint in the long hiof the Policy that those who wrote the standard consideretradeoff. In spite of overwhelming empirical evidence to the ctrary, they tacitly assumed that if a curve of a given radiubanked~superelevated! in accordance with the Policy, the curveappropriately safe. In fact, the safety of horizontal curvessigned by following the Policy is simply unpremeditated. TPolicy is the embodiment of tradition, judgment, intuition, aexperience, not of empirical evidence. As such, the Policypart of the pragmatic, not of the rational style of road samanagement. The example discussed here was that of horicurve design. The reader can ask similar questions abouwidth, grade, vertical curves, etc. In every case the answersame—by adhering to the standards and methods of the Pthe level of safety built into the road is unknown.

The problem is that the authors of such standards were coto deal with safety on the basis of their own understandingperience, and intuition, without much recourse to empiricaldence available from research. In this manner a long tradarose that defined safety in terms of sight distances, overtumoment, separation between oncoming vehicles, and similarogates, a tradition that divorced road safety from what it reis—namely, crash frequency and severity. The link betweensurrogates and crashes was simply assumed to exist. As aadherence to such standards is in the domain of what was“pragmatic,” not in the domain of the “rational.” By teaching tmaterial to undergraduate civil engineers the illusion is crethat by following standards and warrants road safety is loafter; civil engineers are not taught to foresee the road srepercussions of their design decisions.

The line connecting the two prototype styles in Fig. 1 haarrowhead pointing to the right. My intention was to showprogress is away from the pragmatic and toward the rationalof road safety management. That this is indeed the directiochange follows from four lines of reasoning. First, the historhumanity is the story of moving away from action based on iition and belief, and toward action based on fact-based knowand science. It would be extraordinary if the management ofsafety continued to buck this universal trend. Second, oncintuitively obvious has been implemented, only relianceknowledge, science, and technology holds the promise of reing the toll of crashes effectively. Third, the Intermodal SurfTransportation Efficiency Act and the Transportation Equityfor the 21st Century require transportation plans and decisiothe state and metropolitan levels to take road safety into ac
more directly. A research project~NCHRP 2002!, the purpose of
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which is to incorporate road safety considerations into long rtransportation plans as required by legislation, is now in progIn the Colorado Dept. of Transportation, the explicit consideraof safety in major transportation projects is now standard. Fomultifaceted movement in the direction of rational safety manment is already underway. Consider the following signs.

Until recently, authoritative documents about the geomdesign of roads contained no explicit information about the cconsequences of routine design decisions. This has changecally in the recent Canadian Guide~TAC 1999! and modestly inthe new U.S. Policy~AASHTO 2001!. In the past, roads wedesigned and built without the designer knowing whether cracould be saved cost effectively by a change of curve ragrade, shoulder width, and the like. Nor was it known whetheadhering to standards, money is being spent without a comsurate safety benefit. This is now changing. Some fruits oFederal Highway Administration~FHWA! research program ain testing and implementation. Using the new Interactive Hway Safety Design Model~IHSDM! software tool, the highwadesigner can predict the crash performance for any road doption on the drawing board. Also underway now is the devement of theHighway safety manual~HSM!. The purpose of thcomprehensive document will be to: “provide the best facinformation and tools in a useful form to facilitate roadway pning, design, and operational decisions based on the explicisideration of their safety consequences.”~NCHRP 2003!. Notethe important operational words “decisions,” “explicit,” a“safety consequences.” The HSM will be aimed at professiowho make road planning, design, and operational decisionshope is that the HSM will become an influential standard reence, similar to theHighway capacity manual. Another curreninitiative, much broader in scope, is the AASHTO strategic hway safety plan~AASHTO 1998! and now in the processimplementation. Here too the emphasis is on the explicit anquantitative. Thus, in each target area~e.g., aggressive drivinhead-on, and run-off-the-road crashes on two-lane roads, etc! de-tailed guidance will be given to allow rational determinatiabout cost-effective improvements needed to achieve statedity reduction goals. Yet another project has the aim of produa variety of sophisticated software tools for the identificatiosites where cost-effective improvement is possible and tooroad safety diagnosis. Jointly these tools will facilitate the setion of cost-effective treatments for sites. This set of tools~calledSafetyAnalyst! “will incorporate state-of-the-art safety manament approaches into computerized analytical tools for guthe decision-making process to identify safety improvement nand develop a systemwide program of site-specific improveprojects” ~Harwood 2002!.

Taken together these activities are a clear indication thamanagement of road safety is moving from the traditional pmatic style towards the explicit, science and knowledge-brational style.

Some Implications

It is one thing to argue that the direction of progress is showthe sense of the arrow in Fig. 1; it is quite another matteprovide a blueprint for the transition from the pragmatic torational style of road safety management. To remain onground my next remarks are confined to safety managemen
fessionals and safety research professionals. On these issues I

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Safety management professionals are the carriers and supof factual road safety knowledge. One can manage road safthe pragmatic style without reliance on these professionalswhat they know. Thus, e.g., one can leave it to municipal pocians to decide when and where to install a new traffic sigusing as guidance the mistaken lay belief that signalizatioalways good for safety. In contrast, rational management relifact-based knowledge and on the professionals who are itsveyors. It is the competent professional who must know, e.gwhat circumstances signalization is expected to enhanceand the professional’s opinion must have a key role in thesion to signalize or not. In the delivery of health we considnatural that it is trained professionals who diagnose ailmentsprescribe remedies, not civil servants or elected officials. Adistrators and politicians deal with health policies and prioriand physicians, and nurses look after with prevention andment. The same should~and will! be natural in the rational deliery of road safety. Therefore, rational delivery of road safetyrequire professionals trained in road safety. Training reqknowledge of fact. Knowledge of fact is the creation of thesearcher. The researcher also needs to be trained, albeit nosame manner as the professional whose task is make useextant factual knowledge.

Training of Professionals

Those who by their work or function have an important impacthe future of road safety should receive training. The trainingneed should enable them to foresee how their choices are likaffect crash frequency and severity. The workforce in neefact-based training are not only civil engineers, police officand driving instructors; the workforce to be trained includes tplanners, architects, municipal engineers, transportation planand all those who advise politicians, officials on planning boaand perhaps others.

This immediately raises a question. As noted earlier,MUTCD, the Policy, and similar documents are very shorfact-based information about the link between decisions androad safety consequences. One may therefore ask whethinformation to be used to train professionals exists. For, ithow could one devise adequate training programs?

It would be very peculiar if in the course of nearly a centurroad building and road use we did not learn anything abousafety consequences of our decisions. To give an impreabout the prevailing state of affairs, I will describe my expences in working on the IHSDM project. Recall that the goathe IHSDM project was to create a software enabling the desto predict the safety consequences of design alternatives fortwo-lane roads. Design alternatives may differ in horizontal ament, vertical alignment, lane and shoulder width, numbedriveways, provision of left-turn lanes at intersections, and ational factors. To assess the safety impact of design decisiothis kind, the “project group” assembled the relevant publisresearch reports. Some topics were found to have been resein depth, while others had very little was published. Also, ausual, the research studies varied in quality and in their cosions. Once the literature was assembled and reviewed a groexperts met to hammer out what seemed to be the best cosions that could be reached at that time. The results of theirare now published~see Harwood et al. 2000. The review do
ments on several subjects can be downloaded from http://

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www.roadsafetyresearch.com!.There is no doubt that when neresearch results will be published, much of what has been swill need to be modified. Nevertheless, there now exists anthoritative document that is based on the accumulated empresearch, and that, for a fairly large set of design choicesguide the designer of two-lane rural roads on the question: “Wcan I expect to be the annual number of crashes on this roadecide to use design option X?” That heretofore such a quewas not asked by highway designers, and if asked could nanswered, may be puzzling to those who are not familiar withpractice of highway design. In this sense the IHSDM work indis a “quantum leap” in present practice. At least in this case,turned out, the many decades of accumulated research provsufficient basis for building a rational procedure. It followsthe accumulated knowledge on the safety consequences ofdecisions for two-lane rural roads is also sufficient for trainin

Can one provide similar guidance and training on the sconsequences of decisions for multilane roads and for roadare not rural? Probably yes. Is the same possible on topics stransportation planning, subdivision design, traffic calming, trsignal coordination, turn restrictions, etc.? On some such suenough is known, and giving fact-based guidance is possiblothers little is known and guidance must await new researcsults. This is not unusual. There are diseases about whichcine knows little and phenomena which scientists do not unstand. In medicine, in science, and also in road safety, resensures that the domain of what is known continues to expansum, imperfect as the present state of knowledge is, one coutogether a respectable curriculum to cater to many needs.

The problem is not so much that of insufficient factual knoedge; the problem is more in the weakness of the demandToday one can devise a long term transportation plan for a reone can get approval for road network in a new subdivision,can implement a traffic signal coordination and timing plan fmetropolis, one can design a new highway, and in all this, nconsider the future crash frequency and severity differencetween options and alternatives. Because safety consequencenot be anticipated, training in road safety is not required. Bectraining in road safety is not required, training is not availaand is not given.

How do we get there from here? The necessary first stepcreate the demand. This could be done in several ways. Oneinsist that some professional activities and public decisionsbe accompanied by a “road safety impact statement.” The newrite such a statement in terms of accident frequency and seimpacts would create an immediate need for knowledge anding. Alternatively ~or in parallel! one could insist that only prfessionals who have been trained in the road safety aspetheir profession and are certified, may sign plans, designsother documents with significant road safety impact. A tdemand-generating direction is the establishment of saconscious and knowledge-based procedures in major actionters~the department or ministry responsible for physical plannthe ministry or department of transport, the department or rtrar of motor vehicles, the police, the major municipalities, e!.

Actions of this kind may seem too revolutionary, abruptimpractical. If they seem to be so, it is largely because oweight and the inertia of how things are done now. I suspecthe traveling public does not know that the infrastructurewhich they become injured with statistical regularity is planndesigned, and operated without knowledge and premeditatiits safety. If they knew then, what now is considered imprac
or revolutionary would become required and commonplace. Nev-
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Conduct of Research

Research generates knowledge and knowledge is the engprogress. In road safety, the generation of knowledge hasvery slow. True, the problems are not easy to tackle, theseldom sufficient, and the conduct of controlled experimentsaccepted. Yet, given the length of experience we have withbuilding and road use, and the amount of money already speroad safety research, much more knowledge could have beepected. The main impediment is that the research enterprsteered and managed by a top-heavy bureaucratic-manageriwho are consumed by the need to tightly control the reseenterprise and who do not recognize their own limitations. Aondary impediments is in the quality of the road safety reseworkforce. The two issues are linked and both will be discusThe first question is: “Has road safety research been prodresults that are commensurate with the investment in it? Ianswer to this question is “no,” the next question must be: “Wnot?”

The main purpose of research on road safety is to help anthe question: “How is action “X” likely to affect crash frequenor severity?” Pick any “X” be it the paving of gravel shouldesignalizing an intersection, allowing longer or heavier trucks,forcing speed limits—any question you like. On some “X” ywill find that much research has been done; on another “X”will find but a few published reports, and sometimes none. Csider an “X” the safety effect of which has been studied by m~e.g., the safety effect of lane and shoulder width on two-rural roads!. Those readers who have attempted a critical reof the literature on any such subject will attest to the factmany of the research reports found will be quickly discarThey will be thought too deficient in method, too small to dconclusions from, inconclusive, obsolete, of obscure messagased, or otherwise seriously flawed. In the end one is leftvery few studies that are not obviously unreliable and the reof which do not contradict each other. That this is not an egeration but the actual state of affairs I know from rich persexperience and from noting the experience of many othersobvious question is why so much effort, by so many, on so msubjects has produced so little light? Why is so much thatbeen published unsound, inconclusive, and generally of little

The answer becomes obvious if one recognizes how muproduced and published by 1 day wonders, by itinerant andtrained researchers without experience; here today—gone trow. How much research has been ill conceived by those whthe question to be answered, who provided the money, whproved the research method, who accepted the product, anpublished the results.

Several conditions combine to produce reliable researcsults. Paramount among those is the condition that the resebe well trained both in road safety knowledge and in methodroad safety research. That one needs training and experiengood bricklaying and for good brain surgery is well accepNobody assumes that a brain surgeon can build a goodfireplace nor trust the bricklayer to wield a scalpel againstscull. And yet, for some unfathomable reason there exists aspread administrative and managerial notion that commonand an engineering degree are sufficient to do road safesearch. Civil engineers typically do not receive any training in
kind of research method needed in road safety, nor do they gradu-
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ate with much factual knowledge about road safety. Furthermnothing in routine engineering practice helps to relieve thethis innocence. In addition, all to often, after the first stab at sresearch, the clever junior engineer moves on to tasks withresponsibility and more pay. Thus, even learning to do reson the job is seldom feasible. The upshot is a road safety literthat is produced in part by dilettantes and is replete with dubconclusions. Dilettantes cannot help but produce unreliablsults.

Dilettantes would not do much harm if their product was kout of the pages of professional literature. Unfortunately, thisof defence has long been breached. Once a piece of reseafunded and done, publication follows. Not having a researcport at the end of a research contract reflects badly on the spBarriers to publication exist, but are low. Poor quality reseand its unreliable conclusions will find its way to the Transpotion Research Record and the ITE Journal because the concpeer review has been largely corrupted by the same prejmentioned earlier. Namely, that to be a referee of a researchon road safety, all that is needed is common sense; that trainroad safety, in research methods, and experience in roadresearch are not necessary to be a “peer.” In a cynical senskind of peerage is unobjectionable; dilettante reviewers are apriate peers to dilettante researchers. And yet, it is obviousonly trained and experienced road safety researchers and scshould referee research papers on road safety.

The problem is compounded by the managers and admintors, those who decide on research needs, on priorities, oning, and on who ends up researching what. Their judgmemost likely good regarding questions to which their organizacurrently seeks answers. They may know less about whatready known, what research can and cannot produce, andmethods that are likely to produce defensible results. This limtion seriously impairs the quality of their judgement. Furthmore, the manager-administrators have no understanding ono sympathy for, the need of theory to guide productive reseor the need for research on methodology to produce moreworthy results. As a result, research is done about whatimmediate concern and what is pressing; very little researdone about what is fundamental and essential for reachingconclusions.~Thus, e.g., in spite of decades of interest and doof “applied” studies, it is still entirely unknown how trucktributes such as off-tracking, braking efficiency, rollover threold, steering sensitivity, and rearward amplification relate to tcrash involvement. Nobody has done this basic research. Antruck safety performance standards are being written usinvery same attributes. Similarly, it is well known that before–astudies tend to produce very different results from cross-sestudies, and yet, we blithely use results from studies ofkinds, without ever inquiring which can be trusted and whnot.! The manager-administrators have only a dim understanof the methods by which legitimate results can be obtainedtherefore are not qualified to judge what result can be relied uAnd yet, it is this administrative layer who decides what reseaers will work on. In short, the lack of appreciation for the needschooling in road safety and in road safety research permeatit is responsible for poor management of research resourcechoice of research targets, for the conduct of poor qualitysearch, and for polluting the literature by bad peer reviews.

Another facet of the problem is in the Soviet style of manment applied to road safety research. The research topicsgets, goals, and tasks are set by those high up. Contracto
then allowed to compete for the “research” work. Once the con-

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tract is awarded, the contractor has to answer periodicallyproject panel which is also composed largely of personsmanagerial mind set. What is conceived as a “research probecomes in the eyes of the project manager and of the prininvestigator a bundle of “deliverables” to be supplied on timewithin budget. When the filing of deliverables on time and witbudget becomes the measure of success, the quality of the kedge that has been generated becomes secondary.

Practitioners and administrator-managers harbor a deep rprejudice against researchers. They think that researchersknow what questions are of importance; that they are likely toff on tangents and forget about what the question was; thaless their feet are held to the fire they will procrastinate andproduce. As in all kinds of prejudice, this one too holds a gratruth. The pursuit of what is presently not known~i.e., research!attracts people who like the quest for the unknown and theypersist in the questioning even when it leads them in unfordirections. An administrator-manager may call such directio“tangent.” On the other hand, the researcher’s pursuit of whnot known is predicted on the study of what is known. In this,researcher has an advantage over the administrator-maTherefore, the researcher should be allowed to use this advain the formulation of research questions and of researchgrams. An additional advantage of the researcher is in the knedge of what questions can be answered by what method, ifIn my opinion, the prejudice of the administrator-manager lethe present marginalization of the researcher and to dominatroad safety research by Soviet style control attitudes.

The compulsion of the administrator-manager to closelytrol the research process stems not only from the psycholomistrust and prejudice against the research class; at timesflects the self-interest of the organizations to whichadministrator-manager owes loyalty. What if research showeda practice or standard now in use is not in the interest of safeif a program which an organization promoted or in which a ptician took active interest, is ineffective? Thus, for the admtrative mind-set some stones are better left unturned andresearch questions are better not asked. For this, controlaims, process, and product is essential.

The Soviets tried centralized management and it has prodinferior goods. They tried to make painters and writers crwhat the politburo thought is useful for the “people.” They spfied what “socialist realism” is and even invented panels to gand criticize what the artists produce. Can you now namworld-class work of art or piece of word-class literature thatbeen produced under the Soviet regime~and not by a dissident!?Too much of centralized and intrusive management is an aema to innovation, invention, and creativity. Good researchquires a good measure of freedom. If we want to have a vibcommunity of road safety researchers who give us new ustanding, show promising directions, and who bring about brthroughs, then the instinct to control, to dictate, and to mahas to be scaled back. In my opinion, at present, there is toofreedom and much too much control. Research is not piece

I do not hope to get sympathy for my argument from the cof administrator-managers. The vibrant safety research comnity whose absence is lamented is not here to cheer. But thisis certain: material improvement in the product of researcroad safety will come from a well-trained body of researcworking as equal partners within a framework of mutual reswith managers-administrators.

In business, execution is about getting the right product. F
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boardroom rituals to production processes. In the business osafety research, execution is about getting reliable knowleTherefore focus on execution in road safety research demthat the administrator-managers shift their attention frommantras of “identification of knowledge gaps,” “prioritizatio“coordination,” “cooperation,” or “marketing” back to the cenproblem: how to produce useful safety knowledge throughsearch. Having produced many duds in the past, how do wbegin to produce reliable results? The idea currently promulgby the administrator-managers that much can be accomplishfocusing on the management process is completely wrongneed to build into our goals and collective culture the importof performing and publishing quality research.

Just as the problem is evident so the remedy is obvious.here on I will assume that we recognized that past researchduced too often less than useless results and that it is accthat execution in research, not managerial rituals, will bringsults. With this as common ground it is possible to specify whneeded to have a healthy road safety research infrastructur1. To do good research, the researcher has to be:

• trained in road safety knowledge,• trained in research methods, and• consider research as a long-term career allowing fo

accumulation of research experience.2. Only reports that are “peer reviewed” get to be publis

For this purpose “peers reviewers” are persons who artirely independent of the organizations that sponsoredresearch and of individuals performing the research. Furmore peer reviewers are persons who are on top of therent safety lore and who are experts in research metho

3. The process of formulating a research program musttinue to be influenced by agencies that build roads, optraffic, set policies, standards, or warrants. However, thecess must not be allowed to be dominated by these agefor they have an understandable interest in what issearched, what the conclusions are, and in what stonebest left unturned. The trained and independent reseamust be an influential partner in the process of formularesearch programs, the shaping of request for proposalthe selection of researchers to perform the work.

4. To get good research products the sponsoring agenciesrecognize that research is not piecework and cannot beaged as if it was.

Describing the four elements of the remedy was easy; it ias easy to think how the transition from the present inefficresearch setup to a sounder future can take place. How csearchers be trained in road safety and in road safety resmethods if no university offers such a program? Why shyoung people enlist in a program to be trained in road safetyresearch methods~even if they were to exist! if there are noprogressive career paths in road safety research? What wouteach in such a program when present knowledge is fragmethere are no textbooks, and only few qualified teachers? Intion there is the thorny question of control. How can one indthe agencies that sit on the money~FHWA, AASHTO! to give uptheir tight control over what is done and how; how can themade to yield considerable influence over these matters topendent, trained researchers?

The key to creating a sound safety research infrastructurethe creation of demand. If there was steady work, good remution, and progressive, secure career paths in road safety restalented people would gravitate to the field; If talented pe
sought training in road safety research, universities would provide
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the programs; If graduate programs in road safety were offtraining material would be written. Thus, the problem is structand begins with creating demand for road safety researchDemand, in this case does not and cannot emanate from thuser. The source of demand for better knowledge can oncreated by the public bodies~federal, state, and municipal! whosecharge is to plan, build, and operate the transportation infrasture. You can be sure that were the transportation infrastruplanned, built, and operated by the private sector, the governwould be called on to provide the oversight to ensure that sis built into the infrastructure.~Consider, e.g., the National Higway Traffic Safety Administration whose role is to make surecar manufacturers build appropriately safe cars!. But, since it ismostly the public sector that plans, builds, and operates theportation infrastructure, and there is no independent ove~quod custodiat ipsos custodies?!, the demand for knowledgbased safety management has no visible patron. The demancome from within the public sector, from its enlightened prosional and political leadership.

Thus, it is the responsibility of the public sector to createlong-term stable demand for road safety research, with the pise of progressive employment for a well trained workforcethis is not done, future progress will be similar to the past. Gare the days when teeth were extracted by blacksmiths bethey had the tongs and blood was let by barbers becauseowned razors. Today we expect dentists and physicianstrained, to acquire experience, and to practice for a longResearch too is a skill that is acquired by specialized trainingby long experience. This is has been a problem all along, bespecially acute now. The transition toward rational road smanagement is hungry for information produced by comperesearchers. Money is available to do the work and the proof much more research money is looming. Who will do the wo

Epilogue

This ~invited! paper is published in a professional journal.professionals are fortunate to live at a time when the transfrom the pragmatic to the rational style of road safety manment seems possible. As always, the old and entrenched obthe young and emerging. Professionals have an ethical oblig

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to place the interest of society~of the road users! above otheconsiderations. The interest of society is served by the promand gradual establishment of the rational style of road safetyagement. Therefore, it is our professional obligation to do so.means insistence on training in road safety knowledge for prsionals who affect road safety; this means striving for more ience of empirical fact on decisions that affect road safety;means support for a well trained and influential layer of rsafety researchers who can do their creative work free of uessary administrative shackles.

References

American Association of State Highway and Transportation Offi~AASHTO!. ~1998!. AASHTO strategic highway safety plan, Wash-ington, D.C.

American Association of State Highway and Transportation Offi~AASHTO!. ~2001!. A policy on geometric design of highways astreets, Washington, D.C.

Federal Highway Administration~FHWA!. ~2000!. MUTCD 2000Manual on uniform traffic control devices, Washington, D.C.

Harwood, D.~2002!. “Draft work plan.” Comprehensive highway safimprovement model, Midwest Research Institute, Kansas City, Ks

Harwood, D., Council F. M., Hauer, E., Hughes W. E., and Vog~2000!. “Prediction of the expected safety performance or rurallane highways.”FHWA-RD-99-207, United States DepartmentTransportation, Federal Highway Administration.

Hauer, E.~2000a!. “Safety in geometric design standards I: Three adotes.”Proc., 2nd International Symp. of Highway Geometric Des,R. Krammes and W. Brillon, eds., Forshungsgeselschaft für Strund Verkehrsvesen e.V., Köln, Germany 11–23.

Hauer, E.~2000b!. “Safety in geometric design standards II: Rift, roand reform.”Proc., 2nd International Symp. of Highway GeomeDesign, R. Krammes and W. Brillon, eds., ForshungsgeselschaStrassen und Verkehrsvesen e.V., Köln, Germany 24–35.

National Cooperative Highway Research Program~NCHRP!. ~2002!. “In-corporating safety into long-range transportation planning~Active!.”NCHRP 8-44,

National Cooperative Highway Research Program~NCHRP!. ~2003!.“Prepare Parts I and II of the Highway Safety Manual~Anticipated!,”NCHRP 17-27,

Transportation Association of Canada~TAC!. ~1999!. Geometric desigguide for Canadian roads, Ottawa.


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